Don't Lose Her

by Jonathon King

  “May I help you?”

  I wondered if she knew she’d be the first one to take a bullet if one of Johnny’s pissed-off clients came in with a grudge against her boss.

  “Please tell Mr. Milsap that Max Freeman is here to see him,” I said with as little inflection as possible.

  “Is Mr. Milsap expecting you?” the tiny rehearsed voice said.

  I gave her a deadpan look that I imagined was worn by every detective or numbers enforcer or racetrack operator who ever actually came in to see Johnny.

  “Not until you tell him I’m here,” I said.

  The girl did not alter her Alice-in-Wonderland look as she said, “One moment please,” and then slid the window shut.

  I did not sit and instead took two steps closer to the door leading to the attorney’s inner office. It wasn’t a long wait. In less than a minute, the handle clicked, the door opened inward, and Johnny Milsap greeted me with the practiced smile of a back-lot carnival barker or adjustable-rate mortgage broker—take your pick.

  “Well, Max Freeman, friend and confidant of the illustrious Billy Manchester himself. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  He offered his hand. I stepped past it and walked directly into his private office.

  Milsap’s desk was second-rate, faux oak, and devoid of any files, a computer, or even pretend photos of family or friends. He probably had a law degree from some innocuous university, but it was nowhere in sight. There was a wall of bookcases behind him, but they looked so regimented and obviously untouched that I was reminded of a book dealer I knew who could order books by the yard in whatever color matched your wallpaper just to supply ambience. The framed art on the other walls were repeats of those in reception, and I actually had to give Johnny credit for not having black velvet paintings of Elvis up there.

  I sat down in front of his desk and Johnny took up his post behind it.

  “Please have a seat, Mr. Freeman,” he said with only the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. “What can I do for you?”

  Elbows on the armrests of my chair, I folded my hands in front of me, looked unblinking into the attorney’s face, and stifled my urge to strangle the man. He must have read my eyes.

  “First,” he said, clearing his throat, “I would like to offer my condolences to your employer over this terrible atrocity involving Judge Manchester. It’s horrific, unconscionable.”

  News of the kidnapping of a federal judge would already have been flashed on CNN and rippled through the legal community.

  Milsap knew that as Billy’s investigator I would be focused on nothing else. But being coy at such a time was not below him. Again, I held my tongue and my homicidal urges in check and instead reached into my sports coat pockets and stacked ten thousand dollars in cash on Milsap’s desk.

  “I’m paying for information, Johnny,” I said. “You have more connections to drug distributors than any lawyer in South Florida, and it is a possibility that Mrs. Manchester’s kidnapping may be the work of minions from the Colombian cocaine pipeline. I’m asking you to ask around, to listen carefully to the scuttlebutt among your clients. If you hear something useful and pass it along, there will be more of this coming.”

  Now, it was Milsap’s turn to be silent. He looked from my eyes to the money. It talks. Especially when it’s sitting stacked up in front of a man like him.

  Milsap and I had crossed paths a couple of times in the past, once when he was representing a Delaware investment group that was buying up the life insurance policies of elderly black women. Milsap acted as a go-between who would pass those names on to a white-collar degenerate who then paid a mentally challenged drug addict to smother the women if they began to outlive the actuarial profit of those policies.

  Through Billy, I was put onto the case. When the shitstorm came down, Milsap claimed he never knew where the names were going, and never recognized them when they started showing up on the obit pages.

  “It was a fiduciary responsibility on my part,” he told detectives who started sorting out the story after the killer of the women died at Sherry’s hand. “I had no idea.”

  Now, I was actively putting myself in bed with him. The sour taste in my mouth was starting to build with each second he delayed a reaction.

  “You understand,” he finally said, nodding at the cash. “This retainer would be considered the formation of an attorney-client relationship, Mr. Freeman. Thus any conversation between you and me would be considered privileged. Any information that I might access and discuss with you would, I hope, be considered as such.”

  “Be as slick as you need to be, Johnny. You get me something that gets us closer to the scum who took Diane Manchester, I pay you. I don’t need names. I don’t need affidavits. I need to be pointed in the right direction.”

  Again, Milsap looked at me and then at the pile of bills.

  “I know Judge Manchester was working on the extradition case for Juan Manuel Escalante, Mr. Freeman. And I know you and Mr. Manchester are smart enough to be aware of that particular businessman’s connections and outreach. If in any way my assistance …”

  “Your name doesn’t come up, Johnny. I’m not DEA. This is freelance and it’s mine alone,” I said, knowing there was an edge to my voice.

  “OK, OK,” Milsap said quickly, raising his palms. “I’m just saying.”

  “Yeah, I know what you’re saying, Johnny.” I reached into my pocket to pull out another disposable cell phone and dropped it on top of the cash.

  “I know you’ve used one of these before, Counselor. Untraceable, with a single number loaded into it. I’ve got its mate, also untraceable. You get anything, you call me. No way to connect it back to you.”

  The attorney’s hands were now moving across the desk to enfold the phone and the pile of cash.

  “And if something good should come of my information,” he said, pulling in the money as though he’d just won a huge poker pot. “Perhaps one good turn from a fellow member of the Florida Bar might someday be returned by Mr. Manchester himself?”

  I stood and gave the lawyer another eye-to-eye look.

  “Don’t push it, Johnny.”

  Chapter 12

  Diane didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or how long she’d been dreaming. She’d tried to stay awake; had felt her eyelids fluttering, and resisted. She jumped several times when her head bobbed forward. But in the end, she failed.

  She’d tried to be brave. I’ll fight these bastards. I’ll kick someone in the balls and escape. I’ll scratch someone’s eyes out. Instead, she lay down on the mattress. She’d tried to cry, conjured a face for her baby, pulled a vision of Billy and his smile, and then squeezed her eyes tight to force the glands to produce moisture so she could feel the tears run down her cheek. That failed, too.

  Instead, in exhaustion brought on by anxiety, she slept and dreamed. She’d gone back to the time when she was a child, to the first time she’d felt vulnerable and alone, unloved and scared. She might have been six, maybe seven. She’d had a fight with her parents, both of them at the same time, which was rare.

  While on a vacation in southwest Florida, she’d been left in a rustic cottage with a babysitter while her father the judge and her mother had gone to some exotic Florida dinner at the nearby Rod and Gun Club and denied her even the possibility of being left alone. She’d argued she was old enough to be left on her own. She’d thrown a tantrum, replete with tears, and declared loudly that she was no baby.

  She’d stalked to a room and closed herself in, refusing to even meet the sitter. Then she’d snuck out through a window and onto the grounds of the old Everglades City hotel. She’d bumbled about near the docks and boats and marshland that surrounded the near-century­-old place in the half-dark, and had become frightened by the unfamiliar calls of night birds and insects and the moonlit splashes of feeding fish and the underbrush ru
stle of nocturnal hunters. She’d found misguided refuge in a worn, wooden boathouse and cowered there until she was found by a collective staff of anxious searchers and her frantic parents.

  The dream seemed so real—the sensation of wet tears on her face, the fear of being abandoned, the exhaustion from searching the darkness for a way back, hunger from a missed meal, the smells of damp canvas and caustic oils, and the shouts of unfamiliar men’s voices calling out her name. Why had her parents abandoned her? Why had they not protected her? Why was she all alone?

  When Diane jolted out of the dream, she blinked open her eyes and was met only by the darkness and the cloying feel of the hood still over her face. She could feel the moisture of tears against her cheeks and realized she’d been crying. Choking against the close air, she began grabbing at the cloth, wrenching at it to pull it from her face. In frustration, she cinched it tighter around her throat instead. Strong hands suddenly clamped onto her wrists, and Diane began screaming for help.

  She may have let loose two, maybe three cries before the sound of a door bursting open was followed by three heavy steps and a clap of thunder in her right ear. The blow spun her. Her body reeled, the creaking bed frame screeched, and the heaviness of her belly swung a fraction of a second behind the rest of her body, sloshing behind the force that sent her hard against the wall.

  Silence, or maybe deafness, followed. The flashes of light she saw were from the slap to her face, not the removal of the hood. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, saw more swirls of light and color behind her eyelids. Then through her undamaged ear, she heard the first words since being in her court chambers—guttural, threatening, deep, but controlled words:

  “If you cannot control her, we will find someone who can.”

  She heard the door slam. Then the stunning quiet took over again. You’re still conscious, Diane thought. The pain at the side of her face was humming, and there was a ringing in her ear, like a high-pitch tinnitus. She curled her back and bowed her head. Does trauma to the mother cause damage to the fetus? she wondered. If you go unconscious, maybe it does, and if you stop breathing, definitely. End of heartbeat? Stay alive, Diane, no matter what. She again listened to the silence.

  Then she concentrated, tuned her good ear: Was the captor still there? The one who had obviously been upbraided for letting her scream? She stilled her own heart rate and breathing, and settled herself, then listened intently to the air—to the vibration of it, the movement. Maybe the electric air of the disturbance itself made it hard for her to get back to the acute listening she’d been trying to cultivate. Was she alone, or not? Was her guard still here? Was he pissed because she’d gotten him into trouble? Was it possible to hear anger?

  She made a tactical choice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  No reaction.

  “I’m sorry I screamed and got you into trouble. I panicked. I won’t do it again.”

  Nothing—no response. No “shut up, bitch,” or “It’s just a job for me.” No scraping of chair legs. No sliding open of a shut window, just to change the air and take a breath.

  Diane listened closer for the breathing she’d detected before. Certainly, any human being would be feeling something after the threat from that guttural voice that had just berated her overseer. Anger like that raises the blood pressure and increases the respiration. No one could not be affected.

  Then she heard it: a ticking, a wispy click, click, click-ing. She knew the sound of texting. She made it herself when she used her phone while court was in session. She thought of it as a quiet, incognito way to communicate even when you weren’t supposed to be doing it.

  My guard is texting someone, reaching out, outside of this room at least, she thought. A connection to the outside was something, she told herself—a possibility.

  “You can understand that I’m afraid, can’t you?” she said aloud. “I’m a pregnant woman grabbed off the street and stuck in this room with a bag over my head. You can understand that I’m scared, for myself and for my baby.

  “You were a baby once,” she said, taking the chance, making the calculated move, working the only possibility for compassion that she could think of.

  “You have a mother, too. Wouldn’t your mother be afraid for you?”

  Chapter 13

  When she was sure the woman was asleep, Rae carefully, so carefully, slipped out of the room to pee, to see Danny, and to bitch. On the landing outside, she looked out over the open expanse of high empty ceilings, crisscrossing rafters, and caged industrial light bulbs hanging just above her level and casting an orange glow over the space below. On the ground floor, she looked first to her right, at the pile of metal and destroyed upholstery and stacked tires that had once been the white van Danny and the others pulled up in when they’d arrived with the woman. Danny was sitting there alone on an intact removable backseat. The cutting torches and gas cylinders and safety mask were beside him, standing as if his only friends.

  He seemed to sense her presence. When he looked up, she could see the flash of alarm in his widening eyes and his palms came up to warn her back. She thought, Fuck it, Danny, I got to pee, and crossed her legs and frowned in a pantomime of need.

  Then she followed his eyes across the room and saw the other three men sitting at a square card table, corralling a pile of bills in the middle, each holding a fan of cards in their hands. Geronimo the asshole looked up from his cards when Danny stood, and read that something in the air had changed. He turned his face up to where Rae stood, then followed her sightline back down to Danny.

  Danny shrugged his shoulders once, grabbing at his crotch and then gesturing up to the landing. The Indian dipped his chin and with an almost imperceptible nod, gave his permission.

  While Danny moved to the staircase, Rae moved down so that they could meet at the bottom step. She sneered at the “What the fuck you doin’” look on Danny’s face and pushed past him to the only bathroom in the place, in the corner next to a half-glassed-in office. Danny followed, and when she stepped in through the bathroom door, he came in, too. She didn’t try to stop him.

  Rae let him close the door and then spun in front of the old-style porcelain commode, pulled down her shorts and panties in one motion, and squatted, all without once looking him in the eye. Elbows on knees, she sat there—waiting, knowing him. He couldn’t stand the silent treatment. Danny hated when she wouldn’t talk to him, refused to argue out a disagreement, flat-out stoned the idea of discussion. He’d get frustrated, angry, then come back pleading.

  She knew this was her power over him. It wasn’t long before she felt him come over and stand in front of her. She was looking at his jeans, the old cowboy belt buckle, the plain gray T-shirt he always wore, eschewing anything with a print or logo or insignia, and then she felt his curled index finger under her chin and she let him lift her face to his.

  “I’m sorry, baby. But it’s not going to be long,” he whispered, knowing he was breaking Geronimo’s rule against talking.

  “There’s been some kinda glitch. One day, babe, maybe two. Then we’re done, we get the money, we’re outta here,” he said, kneeling down.

  Fucking Danny, she thought. She looked straight into his cornflower blue eyes, the ones that few girls in Leelanau County could ever resist. She was no exception. But she also knew that he never said he was sorry to anyone else in this world.

  “Goddamnit, Danny, is that woman a federal judge?” she hissed. “Is that a kidnapped federal judge up there you got me watching?”

  She kept her eyes on his, using her advantage, turning the blade of guilt. Danny put his finger to her lips, even though she was barely whispering and knew the unbreakable rule, and he inched forward and crouched down, pressing in between her knees, opening her thighs with his chest and forcing her elbows off. Then his face came forward, and she lost contact with his eyes and felt his lips on her forehead.
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br />   “She’s bullshitting you, Rae. She ain’t no judge. It’s gonna work, Radar. You know it’s gonna work. You just gotta hang in, do your part, and we’re golden.”

  She let his lips lay there, their cool touch actually tingling with the perspiration of her forehead. He was using her nickname, Radar, what friends had called her from childhood, spinning off her given name, but also recognizing her uncanny ability to know when something was going to happen before it happened.

  Early on it was simple things, like her announcing the arrival of an ice cream truck long before anyone else could hear its music. Later, it was her correct predictions about her girlfriends’ romances, and her uncanny ability to intuit classroom pop quizzes. The crowning event was her impromptu warning while joy riding in the blackness of night on abandoned railroad tracks in Dave Knowlton’s old-school Dodge convertible.

  It had been a teenage joy ride thing for years. Knowlton had figured out how to ease his daddy’s junker car onto the abandoned tracks using the crossing at Kimberly Road. The wheelbase of the car was the exact same width as the track, and he would pull up parallel on the crossing and drive his wheels carefully onto the rails. He’d let a little air out of the tires so the weight of the car would make them sit securely over the iron. Everyone would then pile in the back and onto the hood of the Dodge.

  All Knowlton had to do was slowly accelerate down the track. You didn’t even have to steer. The rubber wheels hugged and followed the rails and hummed in the darkness of the woods. It was like flying. The effect was even scarier when Knowlton turned the headlights off. Thirty miles an hour felt like ninety.

  One night, they were “rail sliding,” as they called it, when Rae sensed something even she could never explain. The hair on the back of her neck started tingling. An anxiety rose into her throat.

  Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore and screamed, “Turn on the lights, Dave! Goddammit, turn on the lights!”